Emil, 91, just keeps rolling along

MOOR OR LESS

Retired professor plans another trip to ND's Haiti Program.

Emil Hofman’s green walker has rolled through parts of five continents and traveled to Haiti on 17 different occasions.

Of course, the renowned (and sort of retired) University of Notre Dame chemistry professor has accompanied that walker on all those trips, pushing it slowly but surely along.

Emil’s always been a pusher — pushing thousands of students over his 40 years of teaching to succeed in the classroom and then later in their lives’ pursuits ... pushing Notre Dame into a smooth transition of coeducation as the school’s first dean of Freshman Year of Studies ... and, most of all, pushing himself to continue to make a difference in our world of both wonder and woe.

For the last several years, his passion has been Notre Dame’s Haiti Program founded by his former student, the Rev. Tom Streit, CSC. Streit’s program combats the terrible body-disfiguring disease of lymphatic filariasis that affects more than 2 million Haitians.

On what he calls reconnaissance trips, Emil escorts former students, many of them physicians, so they can see the dire health care needs of Haiti and to encourage them into volunteering their time and talents.

“I’m going down again for my 18th time in June,” he says. “This will be my last time. I’ve told Father Streit and my wife, Joan, the same thing before the previous six trips, though. But Joan said if I go another time after this ‘last’ one, I would come back to an empty house.”

Emil is 91, after all. Traveling through the poverty and pitfalls of Haiti is not easy on anyone, let alone for a man who has suffered four strokes and has such a bad back that he must always use a walker.

“Father (Theodore) Hesburgh, who is going to be 95, calls me a young man,” Emil says with a twinkle in his eye.

No one can dispute that he is young at heart. He still has an office on campus and can often be found sitting on an outside bench, awaiting some lively discussion from young students or old priests.

What he really likes to talk about these days is Haiti and the good work that Father Streit is doing there in his battle against lymphatic filariasis, commonly known as elephantiasis. (For more information, go to the website haiti.nd.edu/).

“He is the story here, certainly not me,” Emil insists.

But Emil has brought Streit’s program to the attention of countless alumni who can indeed help make a difference. These recruits have even been labeled “Emil’s Army.”

Emil was in Haiti before the terrible earthquake in early 2010 but he was forced home with a kidney infection just four days before the tragedy. He has returned a few times since then, even taking family members with him.

His granddaughter, Courtney, even worked at the field hospital near the Notre Dame Haiti Program building after the earthquake. “She knows what it’s like to have a baby die in her arms,” Emil says.

“I do want my family and others to see how a large percentage of the people of our world live — and for them to really appreciate our way of life,” he continues.

Emil loves the people of Haiti. And those who have had personal contact with him love him, too. He still tears up when he thinks of some of the friends he lost during the earthquake

He will make his last visit in June, moving slowly but still with a purpose behind his well-used green walker.

Father Streit and his associates hope to eliminate lymphatic filariasis in Haiti by 2020. Emil Hofman would be a year shy of 100 by then.